Homo-epitaxial and selective area growth of 4H and 6H silicon carbide using a resistively heated vertical reactor

Silicon carbide technology is rapidly developing into a production process. This is due to rapid progress in the development of high quality epitaxy and substrates. The authors report on the development of a resistively heated vertical reactor and it's application to homo-epitaxy and selective area growth. Epitaxial growth of 4H and 6H-SiC requires high temperatures (in excess of 1,500 C). In this work the authors investigate resistive heating which offers advantages in cost, temperature uniformity and power efficiency of heating. However, resistive heating presents major technological challenges. Due to the power efficiencies possible with resistive heating they are able to obtain temperatures in excess of 1,750 C. Using this system they have grown state of the art 4H and 6H-SiC. At 1,580 C their background doping is p-type at a level of 3--5 x 10{sup 15} cm{sup {minus}3} as measured by capacitance techniques in agreement with earlier results presented by investigators from Siemens Corp. using a similar system. The background concentration increases by about an order of magnitude at 1,680 C. This system has also been used to perform experiments with selective area growth of SiC using a graphite mask. This masking technology allows for the growth of SiC inmore » specific regions at elevated temperature in excess of 1,600 C.« less